Haiti is again descending deep into chaos and violence — to the point where, historically, the United States has intervened.
Will the Biden administration refuse?
The latest was the March 2 prison break that sprang most of the nearly 4,000 inmates of the National Penitentiary, part of coordinated strikes across the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
Heavily armed gangs now control 80% of the city, including the nation’s only international airport. Armed vigilantes are the main opposition to the gangs across the country.
The chaos forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to land in Puerto Rico, disrupting his return from Kenya, where he was pushing for the deployment of a UN-promised international force to help restore order.
The State Department has urged Americans to leave Haiti, but good luck; the gangs have the airport and the neighboring Dominican Republic has closed its airspace to planes flying to and from Haiti.
One gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, an ex-police officer, threatened “civil war that will lead to genocide” unless Henry steps down — but civil war might be more orderly than the insanity now inflicting Haiti.
Sparking the latest downward spiral was President Jovenel Moise’s assassination in July 2021, followed by Henry’s takeover as de facto dictator; he escaped an assassination attempt the next January and has refused to hold elections.
At this point, the Parliament doesn’t have enough members to meet legally (if there was a safe place to do so); the high court is similarly dysfunctional.
You see why tens of thousands of Haitians have tried to flee to America, most famously the 17,000 camped under that Del Rio, Texas, bridge in 2021.
The Biden administration, in turn, has respected Henry as Haiti’s leader not least because he’s willing to kosherize US deportation of Haitian illegal migrants.
The White House says it won’t send US troops to Haiti to restore order, but only help fund that UN force, which is supposed to be comprised of security personnel from Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.
The UN Security Council OK’d that Kenyan-led force in October, but actually deploying it seems beyond dicey: The last (Brazilian-led) UN force sent to “help” Haiti pulled out in 2017 after causing a cholera outbreak; some of its troops reportedly raped and looted themselves.
President Biden’s getting very loud about the humanitarian crisis of the 2 million trapped in Gaza; perhaps he could spare some words for the misery of 11 million Haitians, just a few hundred miles from US shores?